Sea

For a while I’ve been looking for a way to share some of my fiction writing. Let me start off by saying that I am admittedly not very good at fiction. I’ve tried it for years, because for a long time I didn’t realize that there was any other type of writing (other than poetry, which I’m also junk at) that didn’t involve tons of research. Then I was introduced to the non-fiction essay, which I love, and that’s what I focus on mainly in my journals and blogs.

I love the idea of fiction. I have so many storylines in my head that could be decent novels, but when it comes down to putting them on paper, I have problems. I know exactly how I want them to look in my head, but when I try to impart that image to my readers, it starts looking like overly-detailed crap.  As a reader, I hate books like that, and I don’t want to be the hypocrite who makes her readers suffer through all that as well.

Several months ago I got an idea for a piece of fiction that I actually followed through and wrote out, eventually submitting it as an assignment for one of my literature classes. My prof asked us to write about something that was important to us. At the time my university was experiencing some interesting shifts without much openness between the administration and students; and among the student body, grumbling and whispering were rampant. Where truth is withheld, rumor fills the gaps, and there were plenty of viable options flying around as we tried to make sense of the changes that had rocked our school and, subsequently, our trust in the people running our university. We are still in the process of changing some things, and many of us remain frustrated and confused. Mu current position is one of apathy, where I remember that I have one year left, where I choose to keep out of it and focus on getting that diploma in the spring. But about six months ago, I was fed up, confused, disappointed.

And so, as I usually do, I started writing. I was sitting at my desk, watching snow fall into the courtyard outside my window. Earlier that day I had walked up the iron steps of my dorm – the walk that always makes me think I’m coming into Shawshank, especially in the winter. I was listening to my “gray” playlist on Spotify and sorting out what I thought about my university as a whole – not just during this difficult time, but overall.

This is the introduction to the piece that I submitted to my professor.

In the past few months I’ve seen that the school is, above all, run by human beings. Regardless of the tagline and the mission statement and the rituals, it is managed, operated, and steered by man. Which means that it is, in fact, flawed, simply because the human leadership is flawed. The doctrine is shifted according to the beliefs of those in charge, thus making it somewhat less than divine and more open to criticism.

I have been learning to do just that over the past three years: think critically about what I am told and examine everything objectively. For example, much of my spiritual growth has not come from chapel or our Bible courses, but from personal study, discussion with friends, sitting under the trees on campus and watching my God do His thing with each star that appears in the night sky. I’m not saying that it’s not a good place, because I don’t think that personal relationship could have been facilitated if not for some of the people that I’ve met here, whom I wouldn’t have come in contact with if it hadn’t been for this place. But I don’t think it’s been the fantastic haven for me that many others seem to find.

I feel out of place with many of the students here. My cynicism toward organized religion often keeps me from participating in chapels when I see a show, a performance, and I can’t help but suspect hypocrisy (even though it may not be there, it may just be my own judgment). I am brooding and bit melancholy by nature, and the overly-perky people that seem so prevalent here make me feel awkward. I tend to seek out the “gray” people with off-color humor and unconventional perspectives. Of all the people on campus, they seem most authentic to me. Maybe this is why I get more fidgety the longer I’m away from my job at home: I can’t wait to be around people who wear their emotions on their sleeves, who are more open about how they feel when it’s ugly.

At school the theatre has given me such a haven. It is only during productions that I feel I have a place on campus, somewhere that I fit. I am not a confident person. Most of the time I feel awkward in my own skin with my appearance, my thoughts, my emotions, my interactions with other people. If I have a choice between being around a lot of people or being alone, I’ll sit in my room by myself and read. I love to write – I have filled six journals in four years and have started countless short stories since I was eight years old – but not many people know it because I don’t share it unless it’s for an assignment. Some people ask, “But why do you act if you’re so insecure?” I’m not myself when I’m on stage; it’s my character you’re watching, not me.

This is primarily why I chose to write my thoughts in a work of fiction; you can’t tell what is really me and what is simply for the sake of the story. It is essentially my opinion about the university and how I’ve discovered myself through an unconventional place. Over the past year I have become a more confident person, even though I am in an environment in which I feel very uncomfortable and not always welcome. This is a parallel story of that process. It’s completely different from what I originally intended, but I think it is more appropriate to my life at the moment.

I don’t like this short story because of the way I wrote it: like I said, I think that fiction writing is my weakest literary effort. But I like what I’m saying through it. I love that I finally found a way to get across what I think, how I feel, what I believe about the place that has taken up the last three years of my life. I love that I was finally able to express what my heart was feeling but my head couldn’t muddle through. It’s not pretty. The emotions writhing in my heart when I wrote this were not happy ones, and for those of you around whom I am more guarded, you will see the language and the truth that I feel. But maybe for the first time, it is real. The barriers are down, the filter is off. This is my story, my perspective, my heart as I look at the university that has taught me critical thinking and to actively seek out a place where I belong. My purpose is not to offend, and none of the characters have human parallels, living or dead; much of the extreme is in place only for the sake of the story. But the overall emotion is mine.

Since this entry has gone on forever, I won’t post any of it today – I’ll prolly start that up tomorrow. And in a very Dickens fashion, I’ll only put up a little at a time; after all, it is almost forty pages long. But I hope that you read it. I hope that it shows you a side of me that maybe you didn’t know or didn’t fully understand. And for some of you, I hope it is an encouragement. It sounds cynical to say it about my own work, but it was a major encouragement to me.